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“Look out!” Jordan warned.
Suki moved to the side, and the body came sprawling, stopping just by her, upside down. In the moonlight, she recognized Jacob Calakmul’s face. His eyes were wide open, his mouth gaping. She saw his chest move up and down, but he didn’t move. Not even his body twitched. He was helpless.
Angélica gasped.
“It’s him,” Suki said in surprise. She gazed up the steps of the pyramid. How had he fallen?
Angélica grabbed a knife from Jordan’s flak vest. With a wild look in her eyes, she plunged it into Jacob’s chest before anyone could stop her.
“They’re still coming!” shouted one of the army guys. “Too many!”
Suki looked down and saw warriors climbing toward them from all over the pyramid. They fearlessly came onward, leaping from stone to stone to get up faster.
Suki looked at the knife buried in Calakmul’s chest and didn’t begrudge Angélica’s choice. Whatever had passed between them before, he’d left her for dead, and she didn’t want him surviving to come after her later.
Suki charged up the steps again, clambering up row after row. Jordan was right next to her, followed by Angélica and the three army dudes. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she gasped to breathe and keep up her momentum. Almost there!
Something blew up in front of her. The light was so blinding that covering her face wasn’t enough. She stumbled and almost lost her footing. It was like going from a dark house into the noonday sun. It hurt her eyes, but she blinked them open anyway, trying to see. What had caused it? All she knew was she was blinded by it. Regardless of the pain, she dropped onto her hands and clawed her way up the final steps.
It was like staring into the sun. A glyph came to her mind, and she traced her finger through the air, invoking the magic of the kem äm. The stabbing pain of the light subdued, or maybe it was her ability to endure it that had changed. She felt strangely calm.
And then she saw the Maya dude with a glowing sword and feathered wings. She watched as he took out the warriors atop the pyramid, one by one.
She saw a few men dressed in modern clothing cowering in fear. Where was her dad?
Jordan reached her next, but he was shielding his face with one hand and trying to aim the rifle with the other. Angélica joined them and then the other soldiers.
“No, he’s on our side,” Suki mumbled, pushing Jordan’s arm down.
The Maya warrior-god turned and faced them. He had a white goatee, white hair, and bronze skin.
Suki dropped to her knees, overwhelmed by her awe and fear.
“Put down your weapons,” he said in perfect English.
There was a compulsion to follow the words. If Suki had been holding one, she would have slammed it to the ground. The soldiers did so instantly. Then, one by one, they all went down on their knees.
“It’s Kukulkán,” Angélica murmured with awe.
“I am not,” said the angelic Maya in perfect English. “I am His follower. My name is Ezequiel Cumenon. Tend to your father, Socorro.”
She looked to the left and saw her dad with a javelin sticking through him, kneeling on the stones. “Dad!”
She scurried to him, shocked by the blood on his shirt. He slumped down, and she caught him before he collapsed. With one hand, she yanked the javelin from his chest and began murmuring the words of healing over and over.
Her dad shuddered, his body quivering as the magic swept through him. She kept repeating it over and over. “Kunaj, kunaj, kunaj.”
“So . . . who are you?” she heard Jordan ask the angel.
“I am a tioxalaj winaq, a divine servant,” he said, and Suki looked up briefly as she continued to pour out the words and her magic. His glow was fading, but it still radiated from him, as if he were standing amid a shaft of lightning. “I came to punish the jaguar priests. I’ve been waiting a long time for the Jaguar Prophecies to come to pass and the wards that had been blocking us from coming to finally fail. I will hunt down the rest of the jaguar priests so that none can escape. Their time is ending. There will be no more death games. No more torture.”
Suki felt her dad’s shuddering breath on her cheek. Her attention jolted back to him. He was winded, in a lot of pain, his clothes dirty, bloodstained, and scuffed up. But he looked so surprised and relieved to see her.
“Suki?”
She smiled at her dad. “Hey. I think you’re going to make it.”
He wrapped his arms around her, and she hugged him back hard, feeling tears dripping from her eyes. She was so grateful she’d come in time.